Before long, he had all the members of our squad singing along with him.
We had stopped on the side of the road to check out a tire that shouldn’t be there and that was when I saw a bomb sitting in the center of it. I was still singing the song.
And that was how I missed something crucial. Something critical.
Apparently, the bomb that we had flagged had been a decoy, and I missed the fact that it lacked wires.
I should have caught that.
Because as we passed by the tire, I missed the barely-there disturbed ground to the right of the Humvee.
In the next instant, the Humvee was thrown up in the air.
The pain from the force of my body slamming into the roof, the cries of agony from my brothers as we landed on our side.
The fear in their voices as we tried to be men, soldiers, and tough it out.
The smell of gasoline filled our nostrils.
Viper, followed by Lupe, climbed out of the Humvee providing cover as I tried to climb out and then helped to get Shooter out.
Only his leg was caught on something.
Diving back in, I saw that one of the .50 Cals had fallen.
In my exertion of moving the gun off his leg, I hadn’t noticed that the area had quieted.
Gone were the shouts from Viper, Lupe, and the rounds they had been sending out.
Paying it no mind, I continued pulling him from the Humvee.
And that was when, as my helmet breached the outside, the hail of gunfire started.
Taking a bullet in my Kevlar sent me forward, but that didn’t stop me as I continued pulling him out.
And what I feared happening did. One of the bullets hit the fuel tank. With one last pull and one last chance, I removed Shooter from the Humvee, though not before we could both escape the flames that licked from the inside.
Hurriedly, I dropped him to the ground, grabbed my M4, and started returning fire gladly.
That was when I noticed the pain in my left leg wasn’t as bad as the pain on the left side of my body.
I didn’t realize that Shooter had put out the flames on my body while his legs stayed engulfed in flames.
With the last round spent, and no other targets around us, I kept my gun at the ready and finally turned my head to look at Shooter.
And the image of him lying there in the desert sand…
There were no words for it.
After our call for help had come through, standing there in the middle of the base after I had climbed out of the chopper, I looked down at the blood on my hands, the blood that had seeped into my BTUs. Shooter’s blood.
He was never going to walk his daughter down the aisle. He was never going to scare off any boyfriend that she would have. He was never going to tell her he loved her again, and that, well, that was the hardest thing of all.
Hitting my knees there on the base, I had roared with anger, pain, and frustration. Why the fuck were we here helping them when they didn’t seem to want our help?
I awoke to something soft stroking the left side of my face. “I’m here baby. I’m here.”
And with those words, I fell back asleep with her body pressed against mine.
And that morning, I finally broke down and told her about my nightmares. All of them.
Then, almost as if it was magic, I never had a nightmare like that again.
She took all that pain from me and washed it away.